And Sell Merchandise

In a series of tweets made earlier today, Hideo Kojima revealed that characters in Metal Gear Solid V have been designed to look as "erotic" as possible in order to boost figurine sales and encourage people to cosplay.

Kojima stated that lead artist Yoji Shinkawa was ordered to make characters such as bikini-clad sniper Quiet "more erotic," while promising to release the full CG data to allow Tokyo Game Show cosplayers to fire up their sewing machines. Here, starting with this somewhat suggestive picture, is one of the most bizarre exchanges I've ever seen from a veteran developer.

"The initial target is to make u want to do cosplay or its figurine to sell well."

"Dear all Cosplayers. Will be disclosing 1 of the characters in MGSV, Quiet's CG data (inclu detail of her back) this Fri midnit (PST)."

"Quiet's CG data this Fri midnit (PST) at Kojima Productions portal. Pls refer to that for those planning to cosplay for Quiet at TGS."

"In fact, I was asked by one of the cosplayers. She asked the detail of Quiet as E3 trailer didn't reveal the detail."

"Since I cannot reveal confidential info to individual, I decided to official announce."

"The character I asked Yoji to make it more erotic, this one may not be cosplayable."

"What if no one would do Quiet cosplay at TGS even though giving the info...lol"

Is it okay to purposefully sex up your cast in a story-driven game for the specific purpose of flogging merch and getting some colourful cosplayers thronging around your TGS stand? Has this been lost in translation? Or, perhaps, is it refreshing to see a developer actually admit what's been going on in the industry for decades? And does that make it okay? I'm developing a migraine just thinking about it, but it's what you think that matters. [via CVG]

Either way, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is out next year on PS4 and Xbox One. Whether Kojima will provide a canonical reason why Quiet wears a bikini and fishnets during field operations remains to be seen, or whether Snake will be able to equip a thong and bunny ears.

Right? It's possible that the word "erotic" is being incorrectly used instead of "glamorous," perhaps, but there's literally a picture of a bikini-clad ****. I genuinely wondered whether his account had been hacked.

EDIT: Ooh, heh, even we're slaves to the profanity filter. No special treatment here.

When I saw the headline I assumed something had been lost in translation... apparently not. This is certainly one of the odder pieces of gaming news I've seen recently

Same here, I thought, maybe he said Exotic but nope it's erotic....great another game from Japan worried more about appealing to the perverted Otaku's for merchendising reason than the hardcore fanbase.

I'm really starting to get worried about how much focus recent games in Japan have on sex appeal over actual gameplay, just look at the Lightning Returns trailers, they are all turning into 'Dress-Up Lighting' videos than showing actual gameplay. These games already have a fanbase, they shouldn't try to cheapen it by making it sound like they are selling us on sex appeal.